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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26035288">Black Flame</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrarian/pseuds/Astrarian'>Astrarian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Writer's Month, August 2020 [20]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Post-Episode: s01e08 Much More, Writer's Month 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:02:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,121</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26035288</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrarian/pseuds/Astrarian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yennefer loses more than control at Sodden.</p><p>(Writer's month 2020 - Day 20: loss)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Writer's Month, August 2020 [20]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861909</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Writer's Month 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Black Flame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Bury Tomorrow's song of the same name.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fire is exquisite. Exceptional. Enthralling. One of the many lessons taught to initiates at Aretuza is that although every mage can immediately feel the power of the chaos intrinsic to fire, the promises made by those dancing flames must be ignored. The flames promise absolute power, yes, but it comes at a cost: a conflagration that can’t be controlled for long, consuming all in its path until it burns out of its own accord. All-encompassing destruction.</p><p>Catching fireballs at Sodden requires all of the concentration, control and balance that Yennefer possesses. More than she has had to wield in years. The brightness and heat of the oncoming flames causes tears to spring to her stinging, squinting eyes. She hurls the fireballs away, concentrating as hard as possible on that action, directing the flames to burn out against the hillside rather than through the opposing army.</p><p>Until all seems to be lost, even Tissaia. Tissaia, who smiles at her; Tissaia, who gives her permission; Tissaia, who whispers: “Forget the bottle. Let your chaos explode.”</p><p>The urge to let it all burn for a good cause, even if it’s Tissaia’s good cause, is undeniable. After all, it’s not like Yennefer has a cause of her own, and Tissaia wants her to, and she’ll get her legacy: be remembered forever as the mage who willfully put aside control and balance, and laid the world to waste.</p><p>When she draws the fire into her hands, her fingers throb. The skin on her fingertips starts to feel like it’s burning, though it isn’t just yet. The grass chars under her instead.</p><p>She lifts her hands, holding her breath to protect herself against the smoke even though she knows it will choke her soon enough. It’s not that she wants to die, but as she told Tissaia, she’s ready to.</p><p>She lets go, forgets the bottle—explodes.</p><p>The fire roars through her, snatches her breath, lifts her arms—becomes her. With no balance to hold, no control to wield, there’s little left for Yennefer to do. Though, she has enough attention to spare for the small patch of grass where Tissaia is kneeling and staring up at her. She scorches all in her path, except that small jagged circle, and the small jagged woman within.</p><p>But otherwise, she’s incendiary, incandescent. Exquisite. Exceptional. Enthralling.</p><p>The flames rise, and her spirit rises up too, up and up, turning into smoke and drifting apart under the night sky, away from her wretched body. The Nilfgaardians burn, and so does Yennefer.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>So it’s a shock, worse than a shock, to suddenly become Yennefer again—to return from nothing and have human thoughts, human feelings, a human body.</p><p>A body in agony.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She is one thing. Pain.</p><p>It’s indescribable. She hates it. She screams.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Each time she comes back into her body, it hurts just a little less. But it still hurts like fuck.</p><p>Someone’s looking after her. Pulling her back to life, again and again.</p><p>She hates them.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>At some point, inside all of the pain and undeniable screams, she realises that she sees nothing. She knows what her body is, where it is, when she moves her limbs, so she knows her eyelids are open. Yet there’s only darkness in front of her. No sight of where she is, of who she has to destroy to get the pain to stop.</p><p>Her eyelids are open and every nerve in them is alive and screaming like the rest of her. She’s on fire all over again. But the flames are invisible, black like the nothingness of her vision. All-encompassing. Exquisite. Excruciating.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The smoke clears during one return visit. She’s gone insane, she knows; swearing on any listening gods for death and destruction, crying herself hoarse, as she writhes from an itch that lives deep inside her skin and is never relieved. She’s absolutely mad, maddened, maddening.</p><p>“Give it a rest,” a voice says by her ear.</p><p>She knows the voice, belonging to a person she doesn’t want to hear. Not Triss, not Tissaia, not Sabrina, not Geralt.</p><p>“I’ll kill you, Fringilla!” she screams, hating the Nilfgaardian so purely that it’s an insult that she doesn’t combust all over again.</p><p>“Like you killed everyone else?” Fringilla whispers. “Like… well.”</p><p>Fringilla touches her, excoriating the raw wound that is her entire body.</p><p>Yennefer’s on fire. She can’t freeze. She can only burn. The grief lights her up.</p><p>“Liar,” she hisses.</p><p>“How you didn’t die in the first place is something of a mystery to me,” Fringilla murmurs. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this so easily.”</p><p>A sensation so cold and soothing spreads from her fingers that Yennefer can do nothing but cry out and flee headfirst into the respite it provides.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Nilfgaard. Fringilla.</p><p>Burned. Blind.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“How did you channel fire with dying?” Fringilla asks, without expecting an answer.</p><p>She asks questions like this, sounding more intrigued and less accusatory each time. Yennefer’s answer remains the same: grit her teeth and curse her as an enemy, hating and hating and hating, until Fringilla applies that blessed salve and Yennefer can get some pain-free rest.</p><p>Her dreams are full of fire, of black shadows licking at a jagged patch of grass, licking the orange edges of the flames until all of the bright colours are snuffed out.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It goes on in this way, and Yennefer can barely remember a time when everything wasn’t dark. The things she does remember vividly, like laughter and Geralt’s pale hair and that final smile from Tissaia, feel further and further away.</p><p>“The Northern Realms are in shambles. Once your burns have healed you’ve nowhere to go, Yennefer.” Fringilla laughs cruelly. “A blind, scarred mage looking for a place at those backwards courts? They’ll never accept you.”</p><p>Her hatred for Fringilla never feels far away.</p><p>“They can’t give you what we can here. Join us, Yennefer. You have such aptitude. You could become the Continent’s foremost expert on pyromancy.”</p><p>Yennefer ignores this exhortation in all its forms.</p><p>But as it goes on, she stops cursing, though she keeps grinding her teeth. </p><p>Geralt doesn’t come. Tissaia doesn’t come.</p><p>As time goes on, she stops grinding her teeth, but she keeps hating. It creeps outwards, a forest fire on the move, consuming the memory of green things and fair fragrances. It burns up all her other emotions, until one day, the mere mention of Aretuza makes her snap:</p><p>“You know I’d burn it all to the ground if I could, Fringilla!”</p><p>She doesn’t need eyesight to see the teeth in Fringilla’s words. And she doesn’t need eyesight to be drawn to their power.</p><p>“You can, Yennefer,” Fringilla urges.</p><p>Yennefer’s memory of burning it all down is excruciating. Enthralling.</p><p>Exquisite.</p>
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